


Dreams Come Slow and They Go So Fast

by NMC



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 2017 Welters Challenge, Character Study, F/M, Romance, Theme 1 - Brakebills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 04:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NMC/pseuds/NMC
Summary: Kady finds more joy (as well as more sorrow), at Brakebills, than she ever anticipated.Kady character study about her coming to and leaving Brakebills, with lots of Penny/Kady.





	Dreams Come Slow and They Go So Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the tumblr 2017 Welters Challenge first theme which was Brakebills. I love Kady as a character and her relationship with Penny so I wanted to delve into that a bit.
> 
> This is unbeta'd and I have awful spelling and grammar so sorry if there are mistakes (please point any out to me in the comments). 
> 
> Enjoy X

The ‘secret’ of Brakebills University is poorly kept among those who know the rather more important ‘secret’ that magic is real, and so for the longest time going to Brakebills is Kady’s big dream. 

No matter what her mother says about hedges not being inferior, Kady is sick of always chasing after scrapes of magic. Searching, bargaining, begging. Moving constantly as each safe house runs out of new stuff. Sure, she’s learnt a lot. She knows she’d probably be ahead of most others starting out at Brakebills because of what her mother and her have found and shared. 

But Brakebills gives you magic, instead of you having to fight tooth and nail for it… and for once she just wants it to be easy. Brakebills means stability and she wants that too. Like really fucking wants it. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Looking back Kady thinks she should have known it was too sweet a dream to come true. Not for her. 

She’s only three months out from the normal admissions time when her mother makes her fateful mistake. Marina has a big score all lined up, then her mother goes off book and bites off more than she can chew. But it goes wrong, badly. Two of the other safe house members, both real close allies of Marina’s to boot, end up dead, and all the magic that it had taken months of planning to locate is lost to all of them. 

Her mother ends up on her knees with Marina pulling her head back by her hair and screaming that she’ll pay with her life for this fuck up. 

Even though it’s her own suggestion Kady bitterly hates the deal she makes. A desperate bid in a desperate moment. 

Even though it’s her that begs Marina with a “please, oh please” and “it’s three months till you could have a mole in Brakebills to get you anything your heart desires” she hates her mother for putting her in that position. 

Of course Kady loves her Mum too, but to have the last dream she hadn’t let the world take instead stolen from her by the only person she loves… that’s a bitter, bitter, fucking pill. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

So on her first day at Brakebills she does her best not to be impressed, not to wonder at it all, not to enjoy… and definitely not to become at home. 

Because this is not Brakebills as she dreamed it. She will always be on a knife edge here now, not really a part of anything while she steals and undermines it, and she can’t let herself forget that. Getting comfortable will make it all the worse if she gets caught.

It’s easy to fall in with Penny though. 

She knows having someone else will be useful and he’s hot and confident enough that she’d go for him anyway. 

The sex is great. Like really great. Penny is teasing and strong, and does wicked things with his hands. 

It feels so good Kady does let go, just a bit. You don’t get to flaunt magic in the normal world so it’s a whole other kind of release to just let it flow through her and by the time her hand is hitting the ceiling she is feeling good for the first time in a long time. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Kady flits in and out to hear Marina’s demands, and return with the goods. She avoids her mother. She knows how bad her Mum feels but she’s not good at hiding her anger at the whole fucking mess in front of her so it’s easier to stay away as much as possible. 

She keeps her distance from her class mates too, doesn’t make friends, doesn’t get involved unless pressed upon. 

Penny is the only one she bothers with. He proves just as useful as she’d hoped. He doesn’t have a problem with bending (or, to be honest, breaking) the rules. He’s a look out, and an alibi, and a hand down from the top shelf. 

They both seem on the same page about what they are too each other. Just sex, just escape, just a good time. But he makes her feel less alone and honestly they have a lot of fun together. They fit together with complete ease. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

It takes Kady longer than it should to realise that with Penny she is forgetting her rule of not getting comfortable. 

One day she realises she is curled up in his bed and they are talking and laughing and smoking, and that she has no agenda for being there. 

That all she is after is the rumble of his laugh, the spark in his eyes, the taste of his mouth, the press of him against her skin, and nothing else. His company, just of the sake of his company.

It goes against all the plans she had about distance and protecting herself but Kady finds she is unable to give him up. Instead she tries to excuse herself that it’s okay to have this one golden thing in her life. She tries not to think about how hurt he’d be to know how she’s deceived him.

Because Kady knows Penny’s brusqueness is just an armour. She does it too so it’s easy to recognise in him. Underneath the grinch persona he is brave, smart and possessed of a really pure affection for her that he increasingly can’t hide. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

When he stands in front of her in the dark, completely bare, and tells her he loves her, the words are, literally, heart wrenching. Her chest aches with guilt and fear; that she’s used him, lied to him, that she’s fallen so hard for him despite all her best laid plans, that it’s all going to go away and he will hate her as soon as he knows. 

It’s been mounting since what Julia and Marina did to Quentin. She’d known she couldn’t keep it going with Penny indefinitely. Couldn’t keep straddling these two disparate worlds without falling into the void. The longer she left it the more she’d hurt him. Better to fuck it up sooner than later, right?

So Kady pours out of her desperate and ugly “deepest truth”. The look on Penny’s face is completely crushing, and all she can think is that she deserves the pain and doesn’t deserve him but god she wishes she did. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Suddenly and unexpectedly changing into a bird proves a bit of a distraction, to say the least, but once they’ve touched down in the icy world of Brakebills South Kady just wants to finish talking to Penny. 

He deserves an explanation. Even though she’s sure all she get in return is a goodbye, she can’t leave it gaping unresolved like this. 

The idea of opening her mind to him came while she was flying. Kady’s grateful for how long they soared giving her time to mull it over because it’s not exactly something she is enthusiastic do to. 

She has always had strong wards, without even really trying. Keeping people out is clearly her natural preference. She’s doesn’t normally even tell people about herself, let alone open all of her past and her feelings for inspection. 

The whole prospect is terrifying on a fundamental level. But losing Penny from her life is even worse, so she resolves herself… exposure instead of isolation. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Of course he brushes her first attempts off immediately, and though expected it still stings. 

Kady’s not one to back down that easy though so she keeps trying to meet his gaze even as Penny resolutely looks the other way. 

Indeed she’s so distracted by catching Penny disgustedly roll his eyes in her peripheral vision when Myakovsky calls her “sultry but damaged” (damaging is more like it) that she stumbles embarrassingly on a his simple question.

Later, feeling that she’d like nothing more than to put all the nails she can find straight through Myakovsky, and still completely unable to focus enough to achieve the spell, Kady wanders through the cool, blue lit halls. 

She finds a little concession stand and she picks up the chocolate as a peace offering. 

She’d discovered Penny’s total sweet tooth not long after they first started spending time together. They’d gone hunting for a midnight post-sex snack and ended up gorging themselves on a heap of chocolate bars and gummy lollies that she’d gotten the vending machine to spit out with a cheeky little spell she’d picked up years ago. 

When she comes with her little gift Penny flinches off her touch. At least having their voices muted means she doesn’t have to hear him tell her to piss off. 

She leaves the chocolate behind and hopes Penny can read in her face how desperate she is to explain everything to him. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Eventually she manages gets the bloody nail in and retreats to her assigned room to try and distract herself from her self-pity and pinning. She’s surprised when Penny comes to her but she knows this is her chance to show him. 

It doesn’t even end up being as terrible as Kady was anticipating. Knowing he is seeing her completely is unexpectedly freeing and beautiful. 

It even gives her the confidence to softly tell him (though not in those hallowed three words) that he is not alone in his feelings, that she’s fallen for him as well.

She still expects some questions though, mostly in the vein of “how could you lie to me?” and “why didn’t you tell me?” or at least some comments on her deceptiveness, her theft, her using of him. 

Penny says no such thing. All he does is step forward and enfold her in his arms. He kisses the top of her head and simply says “it’s okay Kady”. 

She is so unaccustomed to such judgement free warmth, to someone just completely understanding her, she doesn’t know how to express to him what that “okay” means to her. 

So she uncurls one hand from where it is clutching the back of his top and with a flick of her wrist the door closes. 

She presses up to kiss him; what she can’t put into words she will say like this. 

They melt together. A major sense of relief seems to spread between them, both so glad to be back in a good place when it would have been so easy to have been prideful or angry and muck it up completely. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

The sex is slower and more savouring than their usual style, and yet not melancholy or serious. Kady is blissfully happy and it shows in the easiness and joy with which they come together.

It’s only afterwards, laying against his chest with the fire flickering that she is able to pinpoint what is really different between them… trust. They are completely revealed to each other now. They’ve made their big confessions and been accepted. There is no more restraint or equivocation, just them relishing each other.

They make their plans to steal just one more thing and set her free, and Kady accepts it eagerly, so buoyed up with their renewed connection.

It’s that memory more than any other that she will relive in the weeks and months after she has to leave. That warm hour of total happiness, with the snow falling outside. 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Just as she had about her dream of coming to Brakebills when Kady looks back she wonders at how content she was then. 

Instead she should have been suspicious it was all going to slip away, the way the all good things in her life seem to, just as she thinks she has a grasp on them.

Even as her joyousness drains out of her upon sight of Mayakovsky she has no concept of how much she will lose in the space of that one conversation. Her mother, Penny and Brakebills, her three loves, all gone at once. 

The chills of walking out into the snow in just a blanket have nothing on how cold her heart feels as she leaves Brakebills, her dreams and her love behind.

**Author's Note:**

> If there is interest I might write a second part to this about Kady returning to stay a Brakebills in season two, reunited with Penny and then having to leave against when magic is gone and he is trapped in the library. 
> 
> So let me know what you think :) I am very new to writing so I welcome all comments and advice.
> 
> NMC X


End file.
